I was having a conversation the other day with a dear friend of mine that we’ll call “Renee”. We’ve come to know each other rather well. We can really be open and share the things that hurt us. In this conversation, she shared something that was really annoying her about a date she went out on.

Now, let me say upfront that I know beauty is in the eye of the human beholder, but I believe Renee is beautiful as a matter of fact, not as a manner of opinion. She is not only breathtakingly gorgeous on the outside, she is loving, beautiful and fierce on the inside, so much so I had to change her name in the hopes that a person who has stalked her in the past won’t see this and make a connection to her very unique, real name.

What was troubling her about this date was the comment that he made once he learned Renee is a Christian. I braced myself because I have had a couple of negative reactions from men when I have shared this about me. Usually, it’s some sort of objection like, “Yeah, I was raised______________________, but I just don’t believe in that stuff.” Or, “How can you be a Christian when evolution is true?” But what Renee ’s date said stopped me in my tracks:

“And you just seemed so intelligent.”

Wait. What? You are reading about a woman who worked her way through college and is a pharmacist! Do you know how much studying you must do to hold that job? How much knowledge you must have? Isn’t a solid work ethic a form of intelligence?

This is not the first time I have heard this response to Christianity. “It’s for the weak.” “It’s for the simple minded.” You see, I’ve heard these things before because prior to becoming a Christian at the age of 41, I used to tell others and myself the same thing. In fact, a year after I decided to put my trust in the Gospels and my faith in who Jesus Christ said He is, I started to have doubts. I started to wonder the things that made me walk away from my Catholic faith once and for all after high school. “Is this a crutch for the weak?”

“Is it possible to be Intelligent and be a Christian?”

The first question we must explore to answer this, is what is intelligence? According to Psychology Today, there is no agreed upon definition or model to define intelligence among the psychological or scientific community.[1]“By the Collins English Dictionary, it is ‘the ability to think, reason, and understand instead of doing things automatically or by instinct.’ By the Macmillan Dictionary, it is ‘the ability to understand and think about things, and to gain and use knowledge.’[2] By these definitions, it seems my friend’s date lacked the ability to think, reason and understand what intelligence is in order to decide if she was herself intelligent. Come on. Clearly a woman who goes through years of intense, high-minded training and education to be a pharmacist is probably of above average intelligence.

But still, is it unintelligent to even believe there is a God, let alone be a Christian? To answer that, we have to examine where we may have come from in order to see if believing in God is even a logical, rational choice.

See, there is only one of two ways the universe came into existence. Scientists all agree that the universe had a beginning. Logic and reason (or intelligence) tells us if it had a beginning, something began it. So, for all of us, including Renee and her date, we have two theories to explore. Either:

1. An intelligent, personal, powerful, space less, timeless, immaterial beingchose to create the universe and all that keeps it going.

Or

2. The universe came into existence, literally from nothing. No thing. As the great philosopher Aristotle once said, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.” Think about that.

Now, I have seen some things in my life, let me tell you. But I have never seen, heard of, or known of anything to just pop into existence from nothing. Renee never has either. Maybe her date did, but just didn’t mention it and if he didn’t mention it, maybe it’s because there’s never been any logical evidence for what he believes, and he didn’t want her to think he was crazy. I don’t know.

However, what I do know is that the intelligent choice of the two plausible explanations as to how we got here would lead the average intelligent person to reason based on what they know and have experienced that there must be some intelligent, first cause behind our existence. Things just don’t pop into existence from nothing in our world.

Also, intelligence is something you measure, and it seems in order to have any degree of intelligence, you must know things. While it is true that some people simply know more things than others, that does not make them more intelligent. A person could have all volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica memorized, and yet fail every academic test put in front of them. We would not call that the behavior of an intelligent person. We would say that person didn’t apply the knowledge they have. So, it seems while intelligence is based on knowing things, it still has another component and that is knowing what to do with it. That’s wisdom. It logically follows, that the more one knows and the more one correctly applies that knowledge to their own life choices, the more intelligent they are.

While all this might make the case that it is intelligent to believe there is a God, it does not answer whether a person can be a Christian and have more or be of the same intelligence than someone who isn’t. As I mentioned earlier, there have been times I have experienced doubt about what I believe. Everyone does—no matter what they put their faith in. I mean, it sure takes a lot of faith to believe something can come from nothing.

During the times I had doubts, they would really rattle my faith. I learned in those moments to doubt my doubts by looking at the Bible to see if it has anything to say about whatever was troubling me. So, this time I wanted to see if the Scriptures say anything about intelligence and Christianity. Turns out it does—a lot, but let’s look at a few verses that shed a lot of light on this topic: 1 Corinthians chapter one.

1 Corinthians 1:5 says, “For in Him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge–…” (Emphasis added.)

What does it mean for a Christ follower to be enriched with all knowledge? According to the Bible,

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction…”—Proverbs 1:7.

What this means is that once we come to realize that there is a God, who has created and sustains everything we could fathom, we are moved into a deep sense of awe and reverence. It’s only then, only after we realize how “small” we are compared to Him and how truly dependent we are on Him, that we can even begin to be in a position to receive the instruction or wisdom as to how to apply the knowledge that we have.

(And if you don’t think you are dependent on God, try holding your breath for 5 minutes….)

Now, let’s say if you wanted to undertake a complex task such as knowing everything you could possibly know about cars—not just how they work, but how they came to be, what their original purpose was, and where they came from. You could read books about them. You could take one apart and try to understand how the pieces work, and maybe even gain knowledge about them by trying to put it back together. However, the most accurate way to learn about the car and the mind who made it, would be to talk one on one with the person who first created it—Karl Benz[3]. He is the person who came up with the concept and designed the idea in his mind.

The same is true for the Universe. If we want to understand how it came to be, then we need to get to know the mind who created it.

But the central point in this passage can be found in verse in verse 18. I say central, because perhaps it contains the key as to why Renee ’s date thinks she’s unintelligent because she is a Christian.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Simply put, he doesn’t know God. He has a misconception of what Christians believe and because of that, the message appears unintelligent. I used to think it was pretty foolish too that a bunch of people pinned all their hopes and radically changed the way they lived because some first century Arab-Jew (He was not white folks. Let’s get this straight) allegedly died for something beyond my control and that information comes from a book, written by men, that could have easily been changed, exploited or misinterpreted. Yes.

I get why people think it’s stupid. I didn’t know God when I thought that as well.

But Scripture shows us it is possible to be an intelligent Christian. We see that one component of intelligence is the ability to logically and rationally know and understand things. What makes Renee an intelligent Christian is her ability to realize that we live in a powerful, beautiful, complex universe that not only had a beginning (and therefore a beginner) but also screams of an intelligent designer. Another trait of intelligence is curiosity. Renee looked at the claims being made in the Gospel and found plenty of evidence that the cause behind the universe is Jesus Christ. Based on that information obtained through logic and reason, she wisely chose to put her faith and trust in His claim and is therefore able to gain the wisdom necessary to live her life with faith, hope and love and eternal security in the comfort of her Creator.

Of course, this sounds stupid if you don’t have the knowledge to understand it or the wisdom of how to practically apply it. You see, as Christians we don’t follow the wisdom of the world. To people that are intolerant enough to judge us for that without having investigated the knowledge of it, with the desire to understand it, we seem foolish.

And that’s ok.

As for Renee , well, she is intelligent enough to realize that while her date may have been a “good guy” and intelligent by the world’s standards, he has a different faith than her (faith that things come from nothing) and therefore, probably wouldn’t have been a good fit.

And that’s ok too.

Something tells me in my wisdom, God’s got a plan for her and her future and that she will be just fine. (Romans 8:28)

[1]Burton, N (2018, November 28) What is Intelligence?.Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201811/what-is-intelligence

[2] Ibid.

[3]Wilkins, A (2001, June 28) Who Invented the World’s Very First Car?. Retrieved from https://jalopnik.com/who-invented-the-worlds-very-first-car-5816040